Ragged
by StrawberriesAndCinnamonJAM
Summary: "It's the addiction to invincibility you get when you've got everyone trapped in your web of lies… it's an addiction to drowning all your misery in that drug that lives inside your veins." Prequel to Writhe. AU. Dark Fic.


**A/N: Yup, it's another Dark Fic. This time, its a prequel to Writhe, my first and best dark fic (in my opinion and most likely everyone else's.)**

**While this is a prequel, you don't necessarily have to read Writhe first or at all, but I suggest you do. It's better that way.**

**THE WHOLE STORY IS IN RUKIA'S POV**

**Yeah, the caps were to catch the attention of anyone who just skips the Authors note.**

**Bananas. **

**Anyways…**

**WARNING: Attempted suicide, mentions of self-injury. **

**Disclaimer: Don't own Bleach… not that there's much of it in here.**

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><p>They all think that they would know if there was something wrong with you.<p>

They all think that they could tell.

And that's what makes it so easy for them to say that there is nothing wrong with you.

Because they believe they know you well enough to notice so badly that they delude themselves into thinking they do.

But they never can.

That's why you can roam free.

For some reason, no one ever imagines that you would hide what you are. No one ever imagines that the exterior is not the interior. They never realize that you're disintegrating until there's nothing left.

'Cause it's so damn easy to slip away into the shadows.

To become unnoticed.

Just be like everyone else, and nobody will ever guess. Just act like everyone else, and you'll be misunderstood, considered to be somebody you're not, which is exactly what you want.

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><p>Emotions are complex.<p>

It's one of the many things you learn.

But more correctly, emotions are _supposed _to be complex. There's a long range in them from simple ones like angry and happy, to more complicated ones.

To be able to read the human expression without mistake, takes practice. It's a skill that few possess.

However, as hard as it is to read emotions, as hard as it is to discern one from the other, it is supposed to be easy enough to tell if one is upset, or pleased.

And that's a lie… more or less.

You can tell if one is upset, but you cannot tell if that is the truth.

Because it's easy to fake emotions, unlike what one might think.

When in a social situation, you laugh and chatter. You mention things, bring up subjects, join in with the senseless babble. You don't have to force yourself -most of the time, you don't have to focus on which emotion to show next.

It just simply happens.

And in the middle of the excursion, you realize that you've being acting happy.

You wonder if you've been cured.

You wonder if somehow some sort of imaginative glue as taken all your pieces and stuck them back together.

But that illusion is dispersed.

The night is over, the drinks are put away, and you're the first to leave.

You back away from the group, smiling ear to ear with shining eyes, but then your face complete turns away, the back of your head is the only thing they can see, and the smile is gone.

It drops away, like a withdrawn curtain, and there's nothing.

Not even the wistful feeling that wants the emotions back, because you never had them.

You really don't care anymore, is what you realize as you face the mirror.

The thing that looks back at you is just as dead as plastic doll.

It is you.

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><p>Life is nothing.<p>

It doesn't matter, it never did.

Day in and day out, you drift through it all.

You have no more hopes; nothing to live for anymore.

You mix up dreams and reality so often, you can't remember if you ever had anything to live for in the first place. You can't even remember whether the last time you hoped was only born from the back of your eyelids or not.

You wear a lot of bracelets now, and you never take them off.

There's even bracelets underneath the bracelets.

Their not for people to see, however. No, their for you to see, and you only.

You keep them hidden under long sleeves and overly large watches. No need for anyone to see them.

No, no need at all.

'Cause now, instead of nothing inside you, there is worry. Not worry for yourself, or anyone else for that matter, but worry that you might be caught.

Worry that your smile isn't large enough, that the spring in your step isn't obvious enough. That you've overdone the joy in your eyes.

You can't afford to be lured into a false sense of security, because there's eyes everywhere. You can never know whether you're being watched, so you must act as if you are always being watched.

If there's anything out there that matters, it is the mask over your face.

It's the addiction to invincibility you get when you've got everyone trapped in your web of lies.

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><p>You're dragging your way through life, pulling yourself ahead by the skin under your fingernails.<p>

You're looking forward but your mind isn't there.

Instead, its nowhere. You can't think, you can't imagine. You're dead to the world, robotic, inattentive.

People still smile at you, simply because they can't see it yet.

They haven't noticed the ugly monster rearing its head inside of you.

Because they don't want to believe its there.

Your normal to everyone but yourself. They all think you're the same as you always were, when in reality you killed your past in the dead of the night, buried it alive in the recess of your mind; past a bridge that you can't cross.

There's nothing left of you but a reflection.

A fake.

A plastic, ceramic, porcelain, fake.

Nobody can see that you made a life sized mold of yourself and left it behind as you faded away,

They can't see, and they don't want to.

Only you can see the dried up heart inside your head.

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><p>You have to pretend you don't notice the looks.<p>

You have to pretend you don't catch the holes your walls, the ones that people stare through.

Nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows.

You tell yourself this everyday.

You walk with a slouch in your back, your hands in your pockets. You don't care how this makes you look, no one will see.

The less space you take up, the less chance people will notice you.

You take midnight walks now, every night, every morning. You get out as much as you can, so that you don't have to be surrounded by walls, 'cause the walls are always closing in on you, getting tighter and tighter.

You can feel the shadows behind you.

Your only lifeline is the object in your pocket; the one you grip tighter and tighter until the cold metal bites your skin and the red elixir drowns your fears.

It's an addiction to drowning all your misery in the drug that lives in your veins.

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><p>The wind drones in your ears, voices catching in your hair and echoing in your head.<p>

You don't want to listen to them, don't want to hear them. You don't need to hear what they have to say.

You don't want to answer the questions the voices propose.

But you do.

_No, _there's nothing wrong with you.

_No, _you're not insane.

_No, _you don't need help.

_No, _you're not losing it.

_No, _there's nothing wrong with you!

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><p>There's shouts and screams everywhere; harried, frenzied, uncontrolled.<p>

It doesn't matter though.

You've locked the door.

And you know for a fact that only useable key cannot be found, for the simple reason that it is currently inside the room, in a box resting in the far right corner of the bottom drawer of your dresser.

There so many voices, jumbled and confused.

You can tell apart one from the other, but you're uncertain as to which is yours.

Your face is staring back you, dead and and empty, a void, a space, a vacuum. The dark caverns under your eyes is a black hole that long since sucked away life.

Your knuckles are twitching, your hands rapping on the wood. The eyes are peeling out the wallpaper, wide and staring, ripping out of wood and paper, and the glass of your window.

Your own eyes jerked around, looking back and forth

Something flashes in the corner of your eye.

You whip around, face to face with the mirror, looking down on your own eyes.

Fear.

You see it, the fear.

It's in you, in your eyes.

You hate it… it has to disappear.

Your hand twists and spasms and rears forward, lashing with bared teeth. The glass shreds apart flesh and bone, your fingers jutting through the jagged glass, the shards stabbing from your skin like canines.

You stumble and drag yourself across the ground that is sinking in around you, sucking you down, chewing you up and spitting you back.

Your hands scrabble and scrap at whatever is there, digging up crevasses into fleshy paper and soft wood..

Your fingers snake around something cylindrical, plastic like you.

The eyes around you watch you fall, blinking. Ripping and chewing their way through your skin, pink fleshy lips stretch and emerge, with dull ragged teeth biting and gnawing

Your nails brake and peeling back as you wrench the lid from its hinges, and it clatters onto the sinking ground

Shaky and slashing your hands jerk and the white tablets spill about, clacking along the sides of the container, imitating a rattle snake's tail; ready to poison, maim, and kill.

You hastily bring them up to your mouth and swallow, wreathing hacks racking up your spine until they all go down.

And then your breathing slows.

The rough carpet meets your face.

Your eyes droop.

You only see a piece of shatter mirror, and the reflection of your violet eyes, before it all goes black.

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><p><strong>AN: You like? **

**My first dark fic got twelve reviews, my second got zero. Let's see how many this one gets... –is secretly hoping for more then twelve-**

**Did any of you notice that I randomly said bananas in my authors note at the top? Are you now scrolling up to see if I really did?**

**Yes, I am bored.**

**Reivew, I command you! ... Please? :)**


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